What it is: Widbook is a new publishing platform for ebooks. What makes this publishing platform so neat is the social aspect, it allows authors to collaborate and make suggestions. Each user also gets their own bookshelf where they can subscribe to other author's work.
When students start a new ebook, they can choose who can see the book when it is published, choose whether they will accept collaboration for the book, and choose if they want to accept comments for the book. Actually writing the book is fabulously simple. All of the onscreen tools are easy to use and intuitive as to their function. The book can have a table of contents, multiple chapters, and pictures and video embedded right into the book. When students are finished, they simply save the book and publish it. The finished book gets a unique url that can be shared.
Mixbook is a free online scrapbook/calendar/card creator. With Mixbook, you aren't limited to pre made templates, everything is fully customizable. The online design software is extremely easy to use and works the way you would expect it to (no unwelcome surprises). Mixbook is integrated with many popular photo sites including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, etc. You can also easily batch upload from your computer.
What story do you wish to tell? The Ghost Who Made Friends with the Genie or how about The Fox Who Wanted a Cupcake? My Storymaker is the perfect storytelling environment for confident and reluctant writers to tell these stories and hundreds more. As you control a character's actions, emotions, and interactions, the program writes the story. Tip: Use with kids who feel unsuccessful and frustrated during creative writing activities.
ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life. There is an Augmented Reality component that may be of interest to some. While the free version allows you to work with the program, there is a premium level that allows for classroom management for teachers.
What it is: Story Time for Me is a beautiful collection of digital children's books for primary students in kindergarten through second grade. Each story includes charming illustrations, animation and professional narration with music and sound effects. Activities accompany every story that encourage imagination and creativity (these are coming soon!). The stories have been developed to teach important values through positive moral themes. Story Time for Me currently has a library of over 30 books and growing. Next Friday (April 22, 2011) Story Time for Me will be launching free personalized activity books where students can become the star of a book.
Students can choose to read each story with or without narration, with or without animation and choose to highlight the words as they are read.
At Lego City you can create a comic strip that feature Lego elements. To create a comic just select a strip format (one box or multiple boxes in various layouts) and start dragging elements into your comic strip. Elements in your comic strip can be resized to fit the frame and maintain proportions among multiple elements. Your comic strip can have multiple pages. When you're done creating your comic strip you can save it online or download it to your computer.